There are a few award redemptions that are just too lucrative not to take advantage of, and for me one of those has been the Aeroplan first class award from North America to Asia for 120,000 miles roundtrip in first class, allowing one to route via Europe. Just a couple of examples of the awards I’ve booked through Aeroplan include Tampa to Chicago to Zurich to London to Istanbul to Hong Kong to Bangkok to Munich to Zurich to New York (trip report here), and Tampa to Washington to Tokyo to Singapore to Bangkok to Tokyo to Seoul to Frankfurt to Seattle (trip report here).

Understandably these types of awards weren’t especially profitable for Aeroplan, so they recently announced that they would be modifying their award chart as of July 15. Kudos to them for giving some advance notice, and I certainly can’t blame them, since the region pairs that saw the greatest mileage increases were those that were previously most taken advantage of.

Anyway, I’ve had a bad habit of booking award travel fairly close to departure lately, and I tend to think that one of the most enjoyable aspects of travel is the anticipation. So this time around I booked my award 10 months in advance. I’ll be doing this one with a friend, since premium cabin travel can only be so much fun alone, in my opinion. Actually, I kind of take that back, since I had a pretty damn good time in the Qantas A380 first class suite for over 30 hours last week, but still.

For once, however, the trip isn’t just about maximizing the amount of time in the air, but more about maximizing the time on the ground and also getting a good mix of airlines in (since my friend hasn’t flown first internationally quite as much as I have).

Anyway, we’ll be flying from San Francisco to Munich in Lufthansa first class and spending about 22 hours in Munich (which technically isn’t considered a stopover). Then we’ll fly from Munich to Zurich to Bangkok in Swiss first class, allowing us to experience both the Lufthansa first class lounge in Munich and the Swiss first class lounge in Zurich.

Then a couple of days later we’ll fly from Bangkok to Hong Kong in Thai first class. Thai’s in-flight service is quite good, though the real show stopper is the ground experience — despite Bangkok to Hong Kong being only a two or so hour flight, you get all the first class ground services, including an hour-long full body massage in the first class spa.

Then after a couple of days we’ll fly from Hong Kong to Seoul in Asiana business class, and after a quick overnight fly from Seoul to Frankfurt in Asiana first class. After yet another overnight we’ll fly from Frankfurt to Seattle in Lufthansa first class.

Anyway, while I’ve just about tried all the products before, I’m nonetheless excited about it, because first class cabins are constantly harder to get into due to many airlines eliminating first class and also more competition for the same seats, given that consumers are getting smarter not only in terms of using their miles, but also in terms of earning more miles through means other than flying.

Now I should probably go ahead and get started on the report from the four continent trip I returned from yesterday. It would be a lot easier if I weren’t headed to Paris this weekend!

Check out the section of Asiana’s website describing their first class product:

Anyone notice anything… unusual?

Next week I’ll officially hit Executive Platinum status with American, and I will have done so without having set foot in coach.

A while back American issued me an Executive Platinum challenge, giving me Platinum status upfront and requiring that I earn 25,000 elite qualifying points (which are different than elite qualifying miles) within a 90 day period to earn Executive Platinum. I started off my challenge by booking a paid (discounted) business class mileage run from Tampa to Paris via Chicago, Miami, and London on the outbound, and London, Miami, and Dallas on the return, which I’ll be flying next week. After applying a couple of systemwide upgrades, my flights from Miami to London and London to Miami were even confirmed in international first class – not a bad way to mileage run!

That got me about 21,000 elite qualifying points (about 14,000 actual flown miles plus the 50% point bonus for flying in a paid premium cabin).

Then I flew roundtrip from Tampa to New York a few weeks back, and even purchased some “sticker” upgrades to upgrade the roundtrip for a total of $240 (which, while not cheap, isn’t bad for upgrades on four flights). All of my upgrades cleared.

Then this evening I’m flying from Los Angeles to Dallas to Tampa. I don’t think there’s a worse redeye in the world than a 1AM redeye from Los Angeles to Dallas with a flight time of 2hr20min (which is why I’m posting this from aboard, since I decided it’s not even worth trying to sleep).

A friend had, against my will, bought me some stickers and upgraded my flight from Dallas to Tampa to first class for $60. Shame on him. However, Los Angeles to Dallas would remain in coach, since it’s a crappy redeye no matter how you slice it.

Well I got to the gate for my flight from Los Angeles to Dallas at around 12:05AM, an hour before departure. I asked the gate agent if they might need volunteers as the flight was looking full, and she put me on the list and was very appreciative that I volunteered to be bumped. Five minute before boarding starts her colleague calls me up to the podium and says they won’t need volunteers. I simply responded with “oh, okay, too bad” though he told me to hold on for a minute. After a minute he told me he would page me again in a couple of minutes. I had assumed (hoped?) that I was getting an operational upgrade, since first class still had two seats left with no one on the upgrade list (that’s right, a Sunday night hub-to-hub flight with no one on the upgrade list) and coach was oversold.

Sure enough, moments later I noticed my name appeared on the upgrade list, and a minute after that I was paged back up to the podium. The guy issued me a first class boarding pass without so much as a word, so I assume I got operationally upgraded.

American rocks! From no status to top tier without flying coach once. My total “investment” was around $2,100 or so. Admittedly I could have completed the challenge for less, though I’m kind of taking more of a comfort approach towards flying. I’ve done over a million revenue domestic butt in seat miles, so if I can get all the way to top tier status in comfort for around $2,100, I’d say that’s a remarkably good deal.

I can’t wait to report my experiences as an Executive Platinum. I’m hoping my upgrade luck stays as good as it has been thus far.

I stayed at the Sheraton Gateway LAX last night, and while it was a perfectly nice airport hotel, I’m dead exhausted. After 12 days of international travel with very little sleep, and in yesterday’s case flying from Vienna to London to Los Angeles, I was finally looking forward to a good night of sleep. I got to my room at around 10PM, and noticed there was a very loud, constant noise in the room that I couldn’t quite identify. I was meeting a friend for drinks (aka Diet Coke with lime) in the bar, so figured the noise might be gone when I get back to the room.

Nope, the noise was still there. I call for them to send up maintenance, though as luck would have it, the noise stopped two minutes after I called and before maintenance arrived.

I went to bed and slept well for an hour, at which point I woke up sweating, at around 1AM. I turned on the AC unit, only to find that it made a loud thumping noise every few seconds. Crap, do I put up with a loud noise or sweat myself to sleep? I went with the latter.

I eventually managed to fall asleep, only to be woken up by the screaming baby in the room next to mine at 3AM. I don’t know where the parents were, but the baby must have screamed for 20 minutes. Ugh, the walls at this place are thinner than United’s new first class blankets.

I eventually fell asleep again, only to be woken up at 6AM by that same baby trying to open the connecting door to my room. I could hear the door on the other end being unlocked, and the baby started knocking on my door. He did so repeatedly over the course of an hour, and I had no clue what to do. Do I open my door and tell them to watch after their kid, do I call security, do I play something inappropriate on my laptop really loud so the family gets the message that they’re annoying me, or do I just shut up? I was so exhausted that I went with the “just shut up” option.

I slept for another couple of hours, only to wake up again from the neighbors watching very loud Spanish television (it sounded like a soap opera, though who knows).

Hey, at least my morning had some entertainment thanks to the lady in the club lounge that was wearing nothing but a bathrobe. And yeah, as the douche that wears pajamas in airports, I shouldn’t be talking.

I’m still trying to figure out where she got the jar of peanut butter from…

As if that’s not exciting enough, a new couple has checked into the room next to mine. As they entered, I heard them open the connecting door and then try to open my door as well, at which point the lady yelled to the guy “this door won’t open.”

The only thing that could make this weekend any more relaxing is an encore performance by the Andaz West Hollywood striking quartet…

As their last “30 Deals in 30 Days” promotion, American is offering 30% off coach award tickets within the continental US and Canada through June 10 for travel between September 7 and November 8 on American Airlines. That makes a roundtrip coach ticket only 17,500 miles.

(Tip of the hat to Gary)

I’ve been avoiding Europe like the plague for several years now due how expensive it is thanks to the weak dollar (though that’s becoming a problem just about everywhere, and not just Europe anymore). Aside from trips to Germany to visit my family, I really haven’t done a whole lot of exploring in Europe otherwise, but have instead focused most of my travels on Asia, where the dollar goes a lot further in most cities.

That being said, when I was younger I saw just about every major city in Europe, since I spent about four weeks in Europe every summer, about half of which my parents and I spent visiting nearby countries.

While I had previously been to some small towns in Austria, I had never been to Vienna. My visit to Vienna was actually a mistake of sorts. When I was planning my trip, I knew I would be flying from Melbourne to London on Qantas and then London to Los Angeles on Air New Zealand a day later, on two separate tickets. The UK imposes a hefty premium cabin tax of about $200USD for a longhaul departure originating in the UK, so the easy way around that is to originate in another country. By tagging on Vienna on both ends (flying British Airways on the outbound and British Midland on the return), I managed to avoid that fee, since the UK just became a transit point instead of a destination.

With that out of the way, Vienna is probably now one of my favorite cities, and that’s after only spending an afternoon there. I have no clue why, but previously I hadn’t heard a whole lot about Vienna, positive or negative, though I found it to be one of the most charming cities in Europe.

What makes it different than many other major European cities is that it has a small town feel. There’s no massive downtown skyscrapers, but instead plenty of nice pedestrian zones, great restaurants, and lots of sites to see. Yet it still doesn’t feel like a tourist trap, which is the vibe I get from many similar cities.

I’ll definitely be back, next time hopefully on Austrian Airlines (which I’ve been meaning to try for a very long time now).

More to come with the trip report…